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Development of mineral supply and demand from 1950 to 2020
Published in Natalia Yakovleva, Edmund Nickless, Routledge Handbook of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, 2022
Mark Burnett, Steven E. Zhang, Yousef Ghorbani, Julie E. Bourdeau, Benedikt M. Steiner, James S.K. Barnet, Glen T. Nwaila
Technological advances have enabled the mining of deposits previously considered to be too difficult to mine and process, either due to economic, environmental, or technological issues. An example of this is the move from mining nickel and zinc sulphide deposits to extraction from oxide deposits. This move was partially driven by changes in environmental and labour legislation, along with the development of new mineral processing and extractive technologies which are used for the concentration of metals, such as ion exchange, solvent extraction, and electrowinning (SX/EW). Futuristic and alternative supplies of critical minerals are currently being investigated. There is a renewed interest in deep-sea mining, first mooted in the 1970s, asteroid mining (Meinert, 2019), and reprocessing of anthropogenic deposits (Mueller, 2018) such as industrial wastes and by-products (Dijkstra et al., 2019).
Industrial minerals
Published in Francis P. Gudyanga, Minerals in Africa, 2020
Commercially, elemental selenium is produced from selenide anode mud as a by-product in the electrolytic refining of sulphide ores such as copper, nickel and lead. The industrial production of selenium is via the extraction of selenium dioxide from the residues during the purification of copper. The residue is oxidised by sodium carbonate to produce the selenium dioxide which is then mixed with water and the solution is acidified to form selenous acid in the oxidation step. Selenous acid is reduced to elemental selenium [624,625] by bubbling it with sulphur dioxide. The power necessary to operate the electrolysis cells is significantly decreased during the electrowinning of manganese by addition of selenium dioxide [626]. The current production of copper is a combination of solvent extraction and electrowinning (SXEW) altering the availability of selenium as only a comparably small part of the selenium in the ore is con-leached with copper [623].
Overview
Published in Sehliselo Ndlovu, Geoffrey S. Simate, Elias Matinde, Waste Production and Utilization in the Metal Extraction Industry, 2017
Sehliselo Ndlovu, Geoffrey S. Simate, Elias Matinde
The production of copper can be achieved using two approaches: (1) a full hydrometallurgical approach which is commonly used for both low- and high-grade oxide and secondary sulphide ores and (2) a pyrometallurgical route which is applied to high-grade sulphide ores. In the hydrometallurgical route known as the leach, solvent extraction and electrowinning (L/SX/EW) route, the feed material first undergoes leaching, followed by solvent extraction for solution purification and a concentration upgrade, then lastly electrowinning to obtain the required solid metallic copper cathodes. In the copper production by L/SX/EW, the potential residues that are generated include crud from the solvent extraction circuit and cell sludge from the electrowinning circuit. Crud treatment is usually undertaken in order to recover some of the organic matter and thus minimize losses which leads to cost savings as the organic matter can be recycled into the extraction circuit.
Direct smelting process of copper carbonate ore using SiO2 as fluxing agent in electric arc furnace
Published in Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly, 2023
Fakhreza Abdul, Muhammad Ikhwan Rahman, Yuli Setiyorini, Vuri Ayu Setyowati, Sungging Pintowantoro
Copper is a metal that has an essential role in the industrial world. The electrical conductivity of copper is higher than that of other metals. Copper also has good aesthetic properties and is corrosion-resistant, so it is widely used in art. The world’s copper demands are predicted to continue to increase year after year. Copper demand will increase in 2100 and reach 3.5–5.5 times compared to copper demand in 2012 [1]. In addition, copper demand is predicted to expand in the transportation sector, with a growth of 30.9% [2]. In 2050, the demand for copper cannot be met by recycling only, even if the recycling process is carried out at a rate of 90% [3]. Therefore, the metallurgical process of extracting copper from natural minerals or ore is still a determining factor in supplying copper needs. In order to extract copper from its ore, pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes can be applied. The pyrometallurgical process uses mining, beneficiation (usually through flotation), drying, smelting, converting, and refining [4]. On the other hand, the hydrometallurgical process is carried out through the Solvent Extraction and Electrowinning (SX-EW) process. Hydrometallurgical processes only contributed to 16% of the total copper production in the world in 2016. The rest of the copper produced is through pyrometallurgical processes [5].